This comment uses Judith Butler’s theory of performativity to engage critically with Siniša Malešević's claim that nationalism is so deeply grounded in everyday social life that it has become ‘omnipotent’. The gist of the intervention is to drill deeper into the contingency of nationalism by looking at how authoritarian, racialized, mono-cultural, patriarchal and heteronormative nationalisms are vulnerable to subversive acts of improvisation that blur the boundary between aesthetics and politics.